Courses
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Communication for Designers
“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings. In the end the communicator will…
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Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf-life in the Supermarket Landscape
The supermarket shelf is a highly volatile, hyper-competitive space. On this shelf products struggle to maximize every possible advantage, all in a ruthless effort to…
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Art, Design and the Public Domain
This seminar is intended to serve as an important research, discussion and presentation forum, information resource and a critical laboratory for further development of…
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Interrogative Design: Animating Monuments
The course will focus on the ways in which designers and artists can help the \”entrenched in the past\” monuments to become enlivened for…
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Infrastructural Ecologies: A Projective Urbanism
This research seminar will explore cultural ideas of ecology specifically as they relate to life in the contemporary metropolis. We will begin by defining ecology…
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The Subject and the City
This seminar takes as its premise that a history and theory of the city cannot be known without an accompanying history and theory of…
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Mass Individualism: The Form of the Multitude
What do three contemporary tropes ubiquitous in recent architecture have in common: 1) complex and varied aggregations, 2) the migration of informal domestic atmospheres into…
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Conservation History, Its Canons and Institutions
This course analyzes the canons and institutions that have traditionally guided the parameters of conservation and preservation practice. As such, the course situates conservation…
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Elements: Rotterdam Study Abroad Seminar
The seminar will reconstruct the role of elemental thinking in the history and theory of architecture. With a particular focus on the writings of Henry…
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Geo-Architecture
\”Geo-Architecture\”: Le Corbusier\’s Urbanism and the Territorial Challenge to Architecture (1911â\”1965) In a 1957 review of a lecture by Le Corbusier, a Swiss newspaper…
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Screens: Media Archaeology and the Visual Arts Seminar
How do screens function as interface between us and the world? What is the role of the screen in contemporary visual arts and media culture?…
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The Cultural Invention of the “Shanty Town”
“Shanty towns” are not a concrete physical human construction but a concept. What they do have as a physical reality are a multitude of physical…
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Critical Memory and the Experience of History
This seminar presents selected texts from the history of conservation (Riegl, Viollet, Ruskin) together with theoretical treatments of the genealogy of collective memory (Halbwachs, Nora,…
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Rotterdam Study Abroad Seminar: The Present Environmental Predicament: Design and the Limits to Growth
This Course is for students in the Rotterdam Study Abroad Program. The title of this seminar refers to two significant essays written in…
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Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases and Comparisons
This seminar course will deal with ‘modern housing’ covering a period primarily from 1990 to the present. It will engage with ‘urban districts’ in so…
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Housing Delivery Systems in the United States
This is a basic course to introduce students to the American system for producing housing. We look at seven “actors”—consumers, developers, lenders, infrastructure providers, regulators,…
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On The Bri[n]ck: Architecture of the Envelope
On the Bri(n)ck: Architectural Envelope traces the historical development of a debate concerning the architectural envelope beginning at the end of the 19th century. It…
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Changing Natural and Built Coastal Environments
Steven Apfelbaum, Katharine Parsons
This course will examine natural and anthropogenic processes affecting the coastal zone and nearshore environment. Ecological principles and their application to design and planning will…
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Information Centered Design Futures – Canceled
With the rise of BIM (Building Information Modeling) and VDC (Virtual Design and Construction) over the past decade, Architecture, engineering and construction practices are rapidly…
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Smart Cities: An Introduction to Urban Integrated Networked Solutions
In its current state, the vision of a smart city is very much fostered by a technologically enhanced worldview of the urban condition, whereas traditional…
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Digital Media and Material Practice
David Mah, Leire Asensio Villoria
The course will investigate the opportunities presented by digital design and fabrication techniques to engage more directly with design as a material practice. The course…
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Expanded Mechanisms / Empirical Materialisms
Machines and material are vitally connected and reciprocally constrained. Each responds dynamically to the other through a range of geometric, chemical, and physical events that…
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Design By Committee. Digital interfaces for collaborative and participatory design / Gamification
This Seminar/Workshop will look into the design and technical challenges involved in the development of web-based interfaces for collaborative design scenarios. …
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Architectural Acoustics
How would Be-Bop sound in a cathedral? How would Gregorian chant sound in a jazz club? And why can you hear every move your upstairs…
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Natural Ventilation
Topics to be covered: Basics of wind-driven and buoyancy-driven ventilation. Use of thermal mass and night cooling. Assisted natural ventilation. The use of airflow network…
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Contemporary Frameworks of Practice
The purpose of this course is: To explore the range of contemporary and emergent practices as they relate to landscapes of social, political, economic,…
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Plugged-in Territories I: Icelandic Energy Landscapes
This advanced research seminar investigates the spatial and ecological implications of the recent shifts in the cultural perception of energy exploitation in Iceland. …
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The Fourth Typology: Dominant Type and the Idea of the City
Open to all students, the seminars of this course will compliment Studio option 1602: Common Frameworks. It will provide the theoretical and historical basis, and…
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Colonizing Last Frontiers: Energy Landscapes in the Chilean Patagonia
Anita Berrizbeitia, Kelly Doran
This seminar will investigate the material and ecological processes related to the development of the Proyecto Hidroaysén (PHA) in the Chilean Patagonia. The PHA, a…
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Real Estate and City Making in China
Real estate has increasingly become a compelling force in the process of city making, one uniquely capable of leading and guiding multiple steps in the…
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Preparation for Independent Thesis Proposal for MUP, MAUD, or MLAUD
This seminar is intended to provide the theoretical and methodological foundation for completing a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. By…
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Preparation of Design Thesis Proposal for Master in Landscape Architecture
A weekly seminar required for MLA candidates electing to pursue a design thesis. The intent of the course is to define the parameters of the…
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Proseminar in Landscape Architecture
This course surveys multiple definitions of landscape architecture. Rather than seeking a singular understanding, the seminar postulates that landscape might be understood in relation to…
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Research Methods in Urbanism
Charles Waldheim, Jason Rebillot
This seminar traces a range of approaches to urban research across the disciplines represented at the GSD. It surveys the complex, and often contradictory ideological…
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Doctoral Program Proseminar
This pro-seminar is one way of fulfilling a requirement for successful completion of the Doctor of Design program. Primarily, it will focus on various thematic…